Holiday pictures 1

Happy Friday!

This would you believe is my hundredth post! he he! Very exciting. I am planning a little giveaway in two weeks time as I am away (again) next tuesday at a christian camp called soul survivor. Look it up if you are interested because it looks fab!

Anyway...back to topic! The first holiday pictures. This year we went to Virginia and a town called Alexandria in the suburbs of Washington DC. The weather was really incredible, sunny hot and slightly humid!

We rented a beautiful house. It was huge in typical american style. No jokes the oven was so big I could have fit in it!

Love the shutters!

This was the Potomac River and the port in historic Alexandria. It was so beautiful, almost like a film set!

We walked around the oldest parts of Alexandria. I found the most INCREDIBLE paper shop and spent far too much money buying hambly screen print overlays and a woodgrain stamp! The building above is one of the thinnest houses in the area!

Cute details in the town

Someone loves their aviators! You can just see my mum in the background happily snapping away!

This picture makes me giggle! We all had to (at the instrction of my mum) plaster ourselves in sun cream. My mum decided to suncream my Dad's almost bald head in case he got sunburnt there! it so happened that here she had put too much on and he looked like he had gone white! very funny! My dad was slightly bemused about what was happening at this point!

We ended the day with a wonderful boat trip down the river to see some of the monuments in washington.

So the first day of our American adventure!

Hope you enjoyed it! I will stop by tomorrow with the next installment! Thanks for stopping by.

Loves xxxxx

A bit of crafty loveliness

Hi all!

I am back from very sunny and very lovely America. We had a lovely time together as a family, ate lots of scrummy american food, met many lovely people and in my case got severely bitten! ouch! I have literally hundreds of pictures and will share tomorrow but today I thought I would show a few pics of a mini book I have been working on for a friend...

I wanted to make something for a friends birthday so decided on a small mini book with prettty pictures and lots of memories.( I am praying she isn't reading this!) I always try and do something a  bit different for someones birthday and a mini book is so personal and unique and nearly always brings out a smile!

This style of mini book is so easy to make and looks really effective. I always have certain things that I want a mini book to be. First and most importantly it has to be tactile. An album goes on your coffee table and yeah it is meant to be handled but not in the same way a mini book is. A mini book has to be held to open, you interact with the pages. Therefore I try and add as many textures as I can...

Here I sewed around the acetate pages, used twine and string and wrapped the whole book up in soft chunky wool!

The basic formula (is that the right word, sounds a bit too much like maths!) for this book was that I chose 4 pictures of my friend. These pictures I sandwiched between acetate and pretty paper and then sewed around them, adding embellishment on top of the acetate as well.

I then found a load of old tags (save ones from clothes, they're so strong and many are really pretty) and decorated them adding rub on words to relate to the message I was going to write on the back. I punched a hole in every page and threaded the whole lot onto a book ring. The result is a book with all different sized pages that looks really quirky!

I personally prefer a book that hasn't regular sized pages because i think it makes it more exciting being able to see what is coming next, but really that is just my preference! I finished the book with some little tags and sentiments.

Although it isn't big I really like the end result and managed to use all my favourite scraps of paper i had been hoarding up! (oooh another good thing about mini books is that you can make a whole one and not break into a new piece of paper! Gotta be good!) I also used some little bits and pieces I found in America. Don't you LOVE the woodgrain stamp I found!!!!

So..the Abi forumula for a mini book. Hope you enjoyed seeing how I scrap. This really is just my way of doing things and certainly isn;t the "right" way if there is such a thing!

Hope everyone has had a fab week, i need to catch up on so many blogs! Thanks for stopping by again!

Loves xxxxxxx

Holiday Time

Hi All

Just stopped by to say, me and my family are off on holiday tommorrow for a week, so no blog posts I'm afraid, but should have lots of nice pictures to come back with and write about!

Gutted I am missing the last week of Shimelle's class, but hopefully i can catch up with it! Take care this week. I'll leave you with some pictures of our holiday last year. I played around with actions and clipping masks again! he he!

Loves xxxx

Out of my comfort zone

Happy Friday

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. I have been nannying a little girl and her friend for the last four days. It was actually good fun. I felt very maternal and I tried to get them out of the house as much as possible because it was such a lovely sunny week. We played in the park for hours, had a picnic and two treasure hunts! All in all a good time...and I got paid, so thankfully no longer skint!

In LYPLYP a few days ago we were asked to find our photography comfort zone and then the next prompt was to move out of it. My comfort zone is people. It always has been. the reason I scrap is to record those special events with people, those everyday moments with people and my lfie as a teenager with my friends.

I photograph people to record moments like this:

Occassions like this:

And memories like this:

For me, breaking out of my comfort zone is taking pictures of inanimate objects. Ok, I do a few landscapes every now and again and I did a bit for photography AS, but otherwise, taking pictures of objects out of choice freaks me out!

I also thought that I would take this prompt the whole way. I never ever shoot in black and white. I am not adverse to black in white. I actually love it. I just figure if I shoot in colour i can always convert to black and white! If you haven't shot in black and white either, give it a try. Its actually really interesting because you become far more creative. the picture has to have a great composition for that is what stands out. Not the colour.

Because i am crazy I also decided to try some post processing editing. I never do this either. Take life as it is is my motto, but I did find some lovely actions on the Coffee shop blog! (try it out, honestly, its fab!) So..these are my results! (ok, a few people did sneak in! eeep!)

So, that is the story of the comfort zone! Now I have a bit more time, I will hopefully stop by for another post sometime soon.

Thanks for reading.

Loves xxxxx

History

Happy Monday
I have spent the day with an 11 year old girl..enough said. No, she is lovely and we had a great day doing lots of crafty stuff! mwah ha ha! i think shimelles class will take a bit of a back seat this week though!

Yesterday my family and I went to a living history day. It was amazing. Loads of battles, plenty of people dressed up in period costume and a real enthusiasm for history in general. It was a great hands on day and I took hundreds of pictures. Just a few here:

Plenty of Vikings!

The guy on the right wanted to buy me so I could become his slave! Lol!

Amazing craftsmanship here!

The littlest one thought the whole day was amazing. I mean whats not to love? Explosions, loud bangs, guns and swords!

Sorry for the short post. I finish nannying on thursday, so hopefully more of a blog post then! thanks for stopping by!

Loves xxxx

Boy meets Girl

Happy Saturday
Have been doing my most recent page for Shimelle's class, Love your pictures, love your pages. The sketch immediatly grabbed me because it used four square photos. I have never done something like that before so I thought..why not have a go!

(I'm sorry, this is another post about the boy, you can switch off now if you want!). I absolutly love scrapping pictures of the boy. probably because I have so much I want to say and two because I get to gaze at his photo and not feel guilty! he he!

If you have never used Picnik, please try it out. I made a photo collage of the four photos in seconds and even managed to add this yellow filter which makes the pictures look somehow timeless...

I chose some of my all time favourite pictures of him and me, cut them out and layered them up...

The layout isn't actually this dark. My camera was having a funny five minutes! I love how it turned out though. I wanted to keep to a tight colour scheme and to chose colours that felt elegant to match with the black and white photos. I kept most of my embellishment to the middle of the page with the pictures. For me, there is a lot of white space on this LO, slightly scary as I feel I want to fill it with something!

Although I wanted to keep the page elegant I also wanted an element of fun. hence the note paper and the type writer title!

The journalling reads:

2 years later, you still make me laugh, you make me so happy and you still humour my need for photos!

Perhaps because of its simplicity, this has turned out to be one of my favourite LO's with all my favourite pictures on it!

A few more details:

I am loving the use of twine at the moment to grunge up a layout slightly!

The colours are better in these photos.

Hope you all have a brilliant weekend. I am nannying for a bit next week so posts may not come as frequently! Oh and I would love some advice. I changed my blog to a three column the other week, but am not sure if I like it, what do you think?

Thanks for stopping by!

Loves xxxxxx

Another Layout

Hi

Ok, this is a bit later than billed as yesterday afternoon, but hey, kept you all in suspense about the latest LO!

.

I am kind of worried because this is the third layout in a week. Something must be wrong with me! he he!

.

So..this is one I made with some fairly recent pictures of my brother. (The middle one, not the little one). I was struck with how grown up he looked. We have such a good relationship with each other, being so close in age and he has now realised that cooperating is the best way to appease me when it comes to photography!

Again for me it is relatively simple. At the moment I seem to be loving using a select choice of patterned paper and then including lots of little details in the embellishment. One thing I love about this layout is the blue border. So easy to do. Get a plastic ruler and a paint dabber. Paint the edge of the ruler evenly in paint and then press on the edge of the cardstock! simple!

.

I always have a problem trying to make a boy page look sophisticated and not too "frilly". Thats why here I used staples to hold the paper in place and string rather than ribbon. Adds a bit of grunge I think!

.

A few more details:

Thanks for stopping by. Hope you all have a great day!

Loves xxxx